At passport control, an official stared coldly and suspiciously at Sam, asking what the purpose of his trip to Eritrea was.
‘Business,’ Sam calmly replied.
The official held his stamp over Sam’s passport, hovering it in the air as if teasing him with the prospect of denied entry. Then he stamped it, his little power trip over.
He caught a cab to a large monolith of a hotel not far from the airport. As he checked in, he noticed two willowy African beauties sitting on stools in the bar off reception. Both were cooing over their male companions, middle-aged white men, one wearing a UN peacekeeper uniform.
He woke the following morning and opened his curtains on to brilliant sunshine and an arid landscape dotted with eucalyptus trees giving way to the outskirts of the capital – a low-rise mess of new concrete housing and more basic constructions topped with corrugated iron roofs.
But the cab journey into the city slowly revealed a more beautiful place than he’d seen from the window. An NGO in the seat next to him on the flight from Cairo had described how, when the country was under Italian rule, Mussolini had used the city as a blueprint for his Modernist architects. Now Sam could see what the man had been talking about.
Long streets of bold 1930s buildings in pastel shades. A cinema designed to look like a large wireless radio, with big button shapes on the front. A garage resembling a futuristic plane, with two long wings of cantilevered concrete under which motorists filled up. A bank conceived like the prow of an ocean-going liner.
It was 8am and Sam was struck by something else. On the palm tree-lined pavements, a small regiment of women in blue tabards were sweeping the pavements clean, while neatly dressed children and their mothers were making their way to school. A scattering of other people moved swiftly, as if late for work. But otherwise the streets were empty. Traffic too was almost non-existent. A handful of buses belching out diesel fumes, some trucks and taxis, and the odd private car. This was a capital city, yet in appearance it was more like a small provincial town in southern Italy.
The taxi peeled off the main boulevard, climbing up an elegant avenue of crumbling villas clad in bougainvillea. The shutters on many were closed. Sam passed one that looked more spruce and open for business than the others, and noticed a polished brass plaque on the wall by the gate, with the legend ‘Ambasciata d’Italia’.
The car continued to climb gently, then turned right and pulled up. They had stopped on a dusty lane. Ranged along each side were more villas, substantial homes that suggested they were still in a comparatively wealthy part of town. A couple of sentry boxes were positioned along the street. Sam saw a man in military fatigues appear from one, place an ancient-looking rifle against the wall and stretch his arms upwards.
The taxi driver pointed at the property by their side. The wall was about eight feet high, the plasterwork peeling.
Sam got out of the car. It was warm, like a summer’s day in England.
He walked the length of the wall to an open gate which gave on to a gravelled drive sprouting with weeds. A stretch of lawn was overgrown and patchy, while the beds were a chaotic mess of rampant flowers and shrubs. Ahead was a long, low-slung 1930s bungalow that might once have been incredibly beautiful. Walls coloured earthy red, shutters sky blue, all now in desperate need of repair and repainting.
He moved past an old rusting Fiat and a discarded child’s bicycle and climbed a short set of steps. He saw a bell pull and gave it a yank. He heard it peeling his presence inside.
Seconds later, the door was opened by a small boy dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. He smiled broadly. He had a handsome face, with a high forehead and eyes Sam had seen before.
‘Are you Gabriel?’
The boy nodded.
A woman’s voice called out from somewhere in the house in a language Sam didn’t understand.
Gabriel shouted back.
The woman appeared at the door. She too had familiar features, though she was drawn and dangerously thin.
But she managed a smile that was as generous as Gabriel’s, shook Sam’s hand and invited him in.
He walked across the threshold and paused to savour the moment, to revisit the circumstances that had brought him here.
The manila file he’d reluctantly looked inside contained a letter from the Home Office granting Zahra UK citizenship. Her passport was also in the file, as was a print-out of a bank statement in her name – with five hundred thousand pounds lodged.
Sam remembered how he’d felt at the time. Manipulated, angered. What price did one place on the trauma she’d experienced?
He’d gone inside, slept on what he’d discovered, then called Strickland to ask Tapper to secure two further conditions. A passport for Zahra’s son, and a generous pension for Ispettore Guido Reni. Sam suspected that the Government would have granted their most high-security prisoner anything at that point. Except, of course, his release. Which was, ironically, the one thing Tapper didn’t crave.
He imagined the satisfaction securing those extra conditions would have given Tapper. The sense that he was pleasing a man who’d become, in his deluded mind, a kind of confessor or therapist. But it wouldn’t last. Tapper would soon unravel. The loss of Wallace, as well as those crimes he’d initially sought to compartmentalise – his part in Eleanor’s attack, Fitzgerald’s murder, not to mention the ninety-six people who’d drowned – would, Sam was sure, consume him. He would certainly suffer depression which, in Sam’s experience, was not something that received much in the way of treatment in prison, bar a prescription of tablets. Would that be enough, or would Tapper slowly come to the conclusion that suicide was the only way out? Sam did not care. He was cauterised to the man’s pain.
With the citizenship secured, Zahra had returned to the UK shortly afterwards. and Sam had helped her find a place to buy in Seven Sisters, just north of Stoke Newington.
He remembered the moment she stepped inside for the first time as the flat’s owner. The look of utter delight on her face.
‘So this is mine?’ she said, hardly believing the words.
‘All yours,’ said Sam, handing her the keys.
They walked through empty white rooms, light flooding in through large windows. But a dark cloud soon made its presence felt. It was a home bought by a murderer. And the passport in her possession was not a bribe exactly – she could not harm the Government – but still a pay-off.
She slumped in a corner, began to cry.
‘I shouldn’t have this.’
‘You deserve it, after everything you’ve been through.’
Zahra looked blankly at him, unconvinced.
‘And think who will soon be sharing this home with you.’
At this, a smile broke across her tear-streaked face.
It was decided that Sam would collect Gabriel from Asmara. Strickland, who was now available whenever they needed advice, said that, despite Zahra’s status as a UK citizen, the authorities in Eritrea could not be trusted to treat her fairly. She had, after all, fled military conscription and was still the daughter of a known critic of the regime. There was even the possibility of temporary detention. Sam, meanwhile, could enter and leave the country unhindered.
*
Sam passed a sitting room of wooden furniture in need of polish. Faded photographs on the walls, one of a proud man standing in front of a stationery steam engine, an escarpment to the side. Another of a family get-together, possibly pre-Second World War. The men in suits, the women dressed in long, flowing white gowns. Had ancestors once held high rank under the Italians – civil servants or engineers?
He was directed to a dining room and asked to sit. Zahra’s mother and Gabriel disappeared. A painting on the wall, of a grand country home, some glimpse of forest beyond, hung opposite him. He strained his eyes to read the caption on the frame. ‘Casa Idris, Keren.’ Former wealth too. Sam remembered Zahra talking about how the family’s money had been appropriated by the regime after her father fell foul of it. Where was
her father, for that matter?
There was a squeak from the hallway and Gabriel entered with a tray of cold drinks, followed by an old man in a wheelchair, pushed by Zahra’s mother.
‘This is Idris,’ said Zahra’s mother. Sam stood. ‘And I am Ariam.’
Sam offered his hand to Idris. But the man’s hands sat motionless in his lap.
‘Idris had a stroke a year ago,’ said Ariam. ‘He has lost his speech and most movement. We do what we can.’ She smiled sadly.
Idris’s chair was drawn up next to Sam, and Gabriel and Ariam sat opposite. Ariam asked after Zahra, and Sam, who’d already formulated a new story with Zahra, told her a rose-tinted tale of how she’d reached the UK, won her case for asylum and successfully secured citizenship for her son. She had a job, Sam said, working for a local community centre, helping other immigrants. Which was true.
‘Gabriel struggles to remember his mother,’ said Ariam, her voice betraying a slight tremor. Talk of her long-lost daughter had clearly upset her. ‘And his English is not good. He hasn’t benefitted from the kind of education his mother enjoyed.’ Ariam’s eyes glassed with tears. ‘Everything has changed since those days.’ But then she glanced in Idris’s direction. ‘Although some things are better.’
Sam sensed her eyes narrow, as if she were lasering in on the fragile man next to him. Sam remembered that he was a military man. Even in his wheelchair, he still had that deportment, some rigidity of the spine that refused to give up even when he’d lost control of his speech and body. His hair was cut short and neatly and he wore a khaki shirt and trousers, as if ready for service at the blast of a bugle. Sam glanced at his hands folded limply in his lap, just below an old belt. A strap hung loose from where it was buckled by a thick lump of metal, a prong piercing the leather.
They chatted some more, the old man a dull-eyed witness to their conversation, before Ariam wheeled Idris from the room and began readying Gabriel for his journey to London. Sam could hear the boy talking excitedly. He wondered how the child would feel halfway through a long flight with a strange man en route to a mother he barely remembered.
Finally they were ready for departure. Ariam walked them both to the taxi idling in the road outside, then wrapped the boy in a tight hug. Sam got the feeling that, for Ariam, the parting was unbearable. She’d already lost her daughter and now she was losing her beloved grandchild, even though Sam had assured her that Zahra now had the funds to pay for her to fly over and visit. Gabriel meanwhile was still in a state of high excitement, now sitting in the back of the taxi, his eyes drinking in the interior.
Ariam leaned in the open window and kissed his cheeks one final time then rose to say goodbye to Sam. She shook his hand, thanked him for his help.
‘Will Idris miss his grandson?’ Sam asked.
Her face darkened. ‘The only thing Idris misses is power. Do you know what his name means in Tigrinya?’
Sam shook his head.
‘Fiery leader.’
The cab departed. Gabriel waved through the back window until the vehicle turned a corner and Ariam disappeared from view.
The boy settled back into his seat and began examining the contents of the small bag Ariam had packed for the flight, which contained books, snack bars and fruit.
Staring out the window at the 1930s time warp city passing by, Sam found himself returning to the cloudy-eyed Idris. And his belt. An uncomfortable sensation crept over him. It was clear Ariam had little love for him, and made no secret of the fact he was easier in his incapacitated state.
In that instant, Sam recalled the nightmare Zahra had in the car. The island she’d found herself on. How she’d seen an object in the perfect sand of the beach. A belt, which morphed into a snake.
There was a suggestion of the snake in the Garden of Eden, which made sense given her Catholic upbringing. But Sam sensed there was an additional layer of meaning, one closer to home. Having escaped the tyranny and dangers of Eritrea, Zahra would have likened Europe to a paradise as she made her treacherous journey here. But instead she’d found it tainted by human nature, by a terror she could never have anticipated. And Sam wondered whether that belt was a reminder of the first person who’d terrorised her.
He thought of the scar above her eye. He knew she had more on her back. Had Idris beaten her with that old leather belt, the buckle prong scraping her back with every lash? Was that visible scar a record of the moment she dared defy him and he’d struck her, not on her back, but across her face?
He’d never know. She had refused to talk about the scars on her back when asked about them at Creech Hill and never wanted to discuss them in therapy. Was it because she’d realised that they had, unexpectedly, been the turning point in her claim for asylum? If a deeply unhappy period of her life suddenly gave her a modicum of good fortune, then he hardly blamed her for keeping silent about the truth. Given her experience of incarceration, Zahra had good reason to be fearful of deportation. Or was it just that those scars were mementoes of a period she was not ready to talk about?
They’d reached the outskirts of the city. Crumbling 1930s buildings had given way to the mess of concrete apartments and makeshift structures he’d seen from the hotel window.
Back in London, Zahra was seeing a therapist – not Sam, they’d shared too much – and finally piecing her fragmented memories back together in a contained, safe place. As Sam had suspected, she also suffered from some anterograde amnesia, an inability to form memories after the incident, which explained how she’d not ‘come to’ until Catania. But those memories had now come back. In addition to the horrific moment when she found herself among hundreds of bodies on the beach in Pozzani, she also recalled begging for a bus fare, before reaching Catania to attempt a crossing to the mainland.
Her therapy was going to be long and tough. Zahra had experienced more trauma in her short life than any client he’d met. But, with the security of a home and the company of her son, not to mention her exceptional resilience, Zahra would forge a new life – of that, Sam was certain.
Zahra shared much in common with Eleanor. He hoped that, one day, they might have the opportunity to meet.
The taxi passed a field of red earth peppered with rocks. In the middle stood a tree, lush green leaves seemingly in defiance of the dry landscape.
Sam would not give up. He had to believe that Eleanor, like Zahra, would emerge from her nightmare.
That she too would survive.
Acknowledgements
Before acknowledging those who contributed to Denial, I owe belated thanks to Hannah Keddie. My old work buddy, she kindly lent her surname to my hero, Sam. Given what he’s been up to, I sincerely hope he’s not let the family down.
I may live in the midst of rural Devon, but the lanes are packed with experts to lean on.
Samantha Knights, an immigration specialist at Matrix Chambers, patiently answered my questions and explained the complexities of the UK’s immigration system, the Dublin Treaty and the tortuous processes involved in securing a foothold in Fortress Europe.
I am also indebted to Dr Barry McKenna, who helped me gain a better understanding of comas, as well as the treatments involved. If I’ve made any mistakes in that department, then please blame me.
Mike Harper proved an invaluable source of information on the workings of the UK police force. Apologies to Mike for a couple of liberties I’ve taken.
I’d also like to thank Steve Haines for once again spotting heinous typos, grammatical howlers and plot inconsistencies.
Honorary Devonian Eve Seymour provided her usual blend of wisdom and insight when it came to editorial support, helping turn my rough first draft into a much more polished effort. I would urge all thriller writers in need of an editor to beat a path to her door.
And frequent visitor to our home, Derek Nicoll, of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, helped me plot Tapper’s mental disintegration.
Finally, huge thanks to a man who lives a million miles from Dev
on, in West Hollywood. When Chris McVeigh gave me a publishing deal with Fahrenheit Press, he made my dream come true. For that, and for all the energy and pizzazz he pours into promoting my books, I am eternally grateful.
In researching Denial, I drew on a number of accounts of immigrant journeys across the Mediterranean. These are voyages that frequently end in tragedy, notoriously in April 2015, when around 700 drowned south of Lampedusa. In 2014, the Italian government announced it was shelving Mare Nostrum, its search and rescue operation, due to lack of funding from other EU nation states (the UK had stated that such operations merely encouraged more immigrants). The replacement, Triton, is wholly inadequate. Voluntary organisations like Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), a crowd-funded NGO, attempt to fill the gap, while EU countries continue to talk options, including a depressingly short-sighted plan to take military action against the smugglers’ boats.
Lastly, a word on Eritrea. Back in 2006, I penned an article about Asmara, the capital, for the Observer, celebrating the city’s extraordinary Modernist architecture. Make no mistake, it is a gem. But what I neglected to mention at the time was the Eritrean government’s appalling human rights record. Indefinite military service, severe restrictions on religion and expression, and torture and arbitrary detention are all commonplace. Little wonder that, like my fictional creation Zahra Idris, thousands flee every month. It’s a tiny country that could have been a huge success story following independence in 1993. Tragically, it’s the opposite. According to the Refugee Council at the time of writing, Eritreans now account for the majority of the UK’s asylum applications.
I hope very much that you enjoyed Denial. Please stay in touch. You can contact me at www.paddymagrane.com/books or via twitter @paddymagrane.
March 2016
COPYRIGHT
This edition first published 2016 by Fahrenheit Press
Denial (Sam Keddie Thriller Book 2) Page 28